


readjustments to the new realities

by en passant (corinthian)



Category: Fate/Prototype
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-05-24 16:00:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6158920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corinthian/pseuds/en%20passant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Father.<br/>Mother.<br/>Tamaki.</p><p>Somehow, be well.</p><hr/><p>Tatsumi left behind his little sister and his parents. A little snapshot for the family who never knew what happened to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	readjustments to the new realities

The police eventually returned everything. Tatsumi's clothes, his school books, his cameras, his action figures and mementos he picked up on school trips. When Tamaki had visited, years ago now, he had pointed each one out. Some of them, he couldn't remember where they came from but would laugh, embarrassed and say that he coulnd't bear to part with them anyway.

Her mother boxes and labels everything, puts them in the corner of the basement and doesn't look at them again. Her father, who had been the most unconcerned in the beginning, can't bear to look — he can't bear to go into the basement, even. There is something haunted in both of her parents. They ask her to move home, to not linger after class, to call and text between every class, between every meal out with friends.

They want to know that she won't disappear too.

Tamaki has told them, with her chin held high that she can't make any promises. That she's going to find out what happened to her brother because he always protected her and it's her turn now. It's her turn to do something for him. She's older than she used to be, she's stronger — 

— but she's not stupid. So she won't promise to stay by their side forever, because she knows something bad might happen.

In the hours she has after she's finished her homework and before dinner, Tamaki goes through each box. It takes her a month, because the first time her mother sees her sitting in the basement, the box contents spread out around her, she screams.

Disrespect. Unnecessary. How could you do this.

Tamaki catalogs everything she finds. It's not much. Her brother lived an ordinary life. She realizes now that she's older — she's older than him, by the time she truly starts looking into his disappearance — he was just a student, like her. She even gets better grades than he used to.

In the end, only two things remain. His jacket and his camera.

Tamaki puts everything back in the boxes as she found it, down to refolding everything but the jacket, everything but the camera. Those she keeps for herself. She wraps the camera in the jacket and stuffs it under her skirt, dashes upstairs and then shoves the bundle under her bead.

Her parents would be upset to know she has stolen her brother's things. The next week is finals, and then break, and it is three more months before she gathers up the courage to crawl under her bed and retrieve it. The jacket has gathered some dust, and the camera needs to be charged.

She gathers her courage, and goes through the pictures.

The first picture is a man that Tamaki doesn't know. A foreigner, blond and oddly dressed. He wears gloves, a vest, a button down shirt that was somewhat dapper. He has worried eyes, but a nice smile.

The second and third are the same man, from different angles.

There is another of the man, drinking from a fountain. Another, one with the corner of Tatsumi's face in the frame, grinning. A handful of badly taken selfies that had none of her brother's normal finesse with cameras. They were so normal looking.

The entire memory card is candids, scenery shots, a story that she couldn't quite piece together. It's a few days out and about. Visiting shops and stores, spending time overlooking the cityscape, stargazing, sharing noodles and tea.

She recognizes a few of the shop names, some of the locations. Some of them she doesn't, but she knows who to ask — crops some of the photos to show only the signs and posts them online.

 _Please help me solve this mystery._ Is all she includes and collects her clues. Maybe someone knows what happened to her brother. Maybe one of them can tell her who the stranger in the photographs is.

* * *

The clerk at the bookstore has no idea who Tatsumi or the man in the photo is, but the owner overhears and draws her aside. The owner is an older woman, not quite a grandmother, probably, and says that she remembers the two young men because they were the only two that went to the English mysteries section.

"They were quite the pair. . . I would have thought them the best of friends, or something more. Perhaps that's an older woman's wishful thinking! Are they well? The foreign one had such an interest in philosophy as well. I ordered a book, but they never came to pick it up. I may still have it, one moment."

Tamaki is overwhelmed. The book she receives is _The Three Faces of Eve_ , but it's in English.

She doesn't tell the owner that her brother has been missing, probably dead, or that she doesn't know who the foreigner was. She just clutches the book to her chest, thanks her and leaves.

The tea shop says much of the same. Her brother came with a very good friend, they shared a pot of tea and dango. They laughed quite a lot, whispered to each other, left.

She visits the train station where they sat and took a picture together while waiting for their car to come. She takes the service elevator up an old office building so she can get a similar view to the one that overlooks the city. She can see the roof of her brother's old apartment building and remembers how empty and cold it had been when she had visited last.

In the end, she finds nothing. The pictures and the jacket remain as they were before, empty and secretive. Tamaki slides her arms into the jacket, pulls it around herself as the night becomes chill and begins her trek home again.

* * *

Tamaki's older brother disappeared, ten years ago. She hasn't quite grown into his jacket, which she keeps and wears — it's part of her weekend look. High boots, a skirt, a souvenir tee from abroad or one of the boutiques in the heart of Tokyo, her brother's jacket.

It's a little immature, her mother comments, every time they meet up to shop or get lunch. But her mother has started smiling more recently and joking. (Her father passed three autumns ago, he had never recovered from Tatsumi's disappearance.) 

But on cool nights, when she talks home at night, hands in her pockets she imagines him standing beside her — though he is too young, now. She is older than him and he hasn't changed at all, because she can't picture him looking a day older than his funeral photograph.

_“But, because you were there big brother, I wasn’t scared.”_

Although —


End file.
